Poker Sweetheartby
NekoNitaComment by LalliSig: Greetings from the critique club.
I haven´t seen this image before, didn´t vote but I probably would have given this a 4 to be honest. Technically it´s not bad but hardly good either. The lighting is a bit flat and the bland black backround isn´t helping, I personally would have liked this shot heaps more if the backround had some texture, like a wooden table or something like that. I notice you used an extremely small aperture for this shot and a long shutter speed. The shutter speed is pretty much irrelevant since the subject isn´t moving but I don´t really understand the aperture. Was it really neccesary to have everything inside the DOF? I seriously doubt it so I would suggest you keep to f5.6-11 to make the most out of the sharpness of your lens, at small apertures the lens starts to suffer sharpness due to diffraction and I think it shows in the shot. As a matter of fact, did you sharpen after resizing it, the shot looks a little bit too soft.
On the good side, the composition is decent, not really an interesting angle but nothing bad about it at all. The shot is pretty well exposed, seem to have a few blown out highlights though so softer lighting would be a key to reduce that. Also the shot is in focus, no question although I personally would have used a bigger aperture.
Certainly meets the challenge but you really have to keep in mind that most people just look at the image for a second and then go on to the next one and you really have to look for all five aces. I would suggest keeping it more simple next time, like having a hand hold all fice aces so that the point comes across right away, it should lead to a better rating.
Hope I wasn´t too negative, I wouldn´t give you such a hard time if I didn´t see potential so keep it up :D
Kind regards, Larus.
Photographer found comment helpful.
